Founded pretty recently in 2001, Arctic Cooling have built a reputation of being able to quietly cool your GPU very well. Swiss engineered and Chinese manufactured they have really dominated the market in VGA cooling, as well as putting out some very nice CPU coolers.

The Arctic Cooling Accelero S2 is a passive heatpipe solution for a whole range of GPU's. With that in mind we took the rather noisy heatsink of one of our test PC's and put it to the test.

Packaging

Arctic Cooling have gone with the blister style of packaging that many cooling manufacturers are picking for their products nowadays. Not only is this great for ease of opening for the consumer, but it allows you to see what you're buying before you buy it.

With a very minimalistic style of packaging Arctic Cooling have let the S2 speak for itself. It certainly looks impressive in it's sheer size.

Package

Arctic Cooling have included everything you will need in the package of the S2, included is:

With a broad range of GPU's supported on the S2, and pretty much most of the rest of the current (including the x1900 and 8800) cards supported on the Accelero S1, Arctic Cooling have done well on compatibility.

The cooler is pretty huge it has to be said. The older Arctic Cooling solutions were more wide than high but this beasty is pretty tall and you should certainly check if you have a smaller case to make sure it will fit.

Having said that it is also pretty good looking for a cooler and stands out when installed.

As you can see there are two copper heatpipes that reach right to the top of the cooler extending from the base where they go into a solid copper base 2.4mm thick. The fins have a large surface area for heat dissipation, with adequate (case) airflow.

The only complaint I would really have is that the plastic top and bottom add-ons are a little..well: tacky for want of a better word. It's not a huge complaint but it's worth noting

As you can see (apart from my clumsy fingermark), the thermal paste is pre-applied to the base of the cooler and looks to be good stuff. I am using this it is as standard in the review so we get a good idea of what the cooler is like when used in a "straight out of the box" situation.

NB: I did re-smooth the paste over before installing!

The finish on the cooler looks to be pretty decent although bearing in mind I could only get a picture of part of it as the paste was in the way.

Although the base looks small compared to the large bases of a CPU cooler I think it looks like it could do the trick.

The ever faithful Sapphire X1600 Pro will be the subject of our review. I have the stock cooler on this card but with a slightly larger fan. Although this is very slightly cooler than the stock heatsink, it makes just as much noise!

This is an all aluminium affair done on a budget so it will be nice to see how the S2 gets on.

I used the temperature recording facility in RivaTuner and double-checked this in ATI's software and with a thermal probe.

Ambient temperature was around 21.7-22°C.Idle Tests were performed after 30 minutes of the PC being turned on and recorded for 30mins at 30 second intervals.Load Tests were performed after 30 minutes of the PC loading up using RTHDRIBL full screen and recorded for 30mins at 30 second intervals.

A note on airflow

The airflow that Arctic Cooling recommends to use is to have all case fans blowing out of the case to create negative pressure so that the S2 draws air into the case through the PCI backplate.

However after trying this my CPU temperature was unacceptable so I reverted to normal airflow.

I have:

* 1 x 120mm fan blowing air into the case through the TJ09's graphics card duct (standard Silverstone)* 1 x 120mm fan blowing air over the HDD bays (Noctua )* 1 x 120mm fan blowing air out of the rear (standard Silverstone)* 1 x 120mm fan blowing air out of the top blowhole (Noctua)* 1 x 120mm fan blowing air through the CPU Heatsink and out through the rear fan mentioned above (Scythe stock)* 1 x 60mm FAN blowing air over the NorthBridge (SilenX)

Installation

Installation of the S2 was not as easy as I thought it was going to be, considering the card we chose doesn't have many screw points anyway.

I found that the RAM sinks provided weren't as sticky as perhaps they should be and needed a little bit of persuasion to stay on the card. I also found that the plastic retention clips used to keep the S2 in place were a little awkward to get into place and I knocked off the RAM-sinks a few times before I got it right.

Having said that it wasn't that difficult an operation and only took me 10 minutes or so to get through.

As you can see the S2 dwarfs our small X1600 Pro - it really dominates the card.

The heatpipes don't obstruct anything and the cooler is fixed firmly to the card with 4 screws. I've had other coolers on this card and none have quite felt that they fit, but the S2 does well and I was confident that the fit was right first-time.

Here you can see a side view and see that the RAM-sinks have plenty of room and don't obstruct the heatsink.

In the case

Here you can see the Arctic Cooling Accelero S2 in-situ

The S2 looks huge installed even compared to the massive Scythe Infinity. However as this is a slightly barebones install I had no issues with clearance and in fact it isn't actually a hassle to install in the case at all. Notice the PCI backplate allows airflow into the case as well.

The Arctic Cooling Accelero S2 is an impressive cooler. Although the card we chose to review it on was only an X1600 Pro, we saw temperature drops of around 10°C on the stock solution.

The fact that it is totally silent means that you don't have to worry about noise at all which is not only impressive but also very reassuring. The only thing I would say to do before you decide to go grab one of these for your card is to check height and adequate airflow through your case. Other than that it's a no-brainer - I'm finding it hard to say why you shouldn't get one for your card.

At around £16 (only found them at OCUK), the S2 is in a very nice price bracket for you to pick up from your local friendly e-tailer.

On a more practical note the cooler is very large and also dual slot - so look out if you need those ports close to your GPU.

I am not hesitating in giving the Arctic Cooling Accelero S2 an Editor's Choice Award and an Innovation Award for a silent solution to what can often be a rather noisy problem.